An ordering process held together by effort
The client supplies branded workwear to businesses. Every order took 6 to 10 manual touchpoints before it reached production: emails back and forth, customisation briefs passed on verbally, and print files exported one at a time.
Clients had no way to see where their order was, so they emailed to ask, which added more touchpoints. The team did good work, and every new client meant more time in the inbox.
Mapping every step first
I mapped the workflow end to end, from the first client email to the file landing in production. Laid out step by step, it showed where errors crept in and where the same information was typed more than once.
Three groups touched every order: clients placing it, staff preparing it, and admins running the business. Each needed a different view of the same order.
Three decisions that shaped it
Customisation happens inside the order
The brief used to travel separately from the order, and details got lost between the two. With a live product customiser built into the ordering flow, clients place their logo and see it on the garment before they submit, so the brief and the order become one record.
Production files export themselves
Once customisation lived inside the order, the portal had everything it needed to produce print files automatically. Export stopped being a separate task.
One order, three views
Clients see status and tracking, staff see what needs preparing, and the super admin sees every order across clients. Nobody has to ask where things stand.
Where it stands
The portal replaces three disconnected tools with one platform, and every order follows a single structured path instead of an email thread. It is in development, so results will be added once it has run on live orders.
Why there are no screens
The client's name and the real screens are kept confidential, so the visuals on this page are simplified prototypes of the layouts, with no client branding or real data. I'm happy to walk through the actual work on a call.